East Africa has been lashed for several weeks by torrential
rain, creating floods and mudslides which have claimed
both lives and homes. Unusual weather patterns over
parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, blamed in part
on the "El-Nino effect", have delivered as
much as ten times the normal downfall for this time
of year and triggered new humanitarian crises..

Farmers have been particularly hard hit. Crops have
been destroyed and large numbers of livestock drowned.
The damage to local infrastructure is also immense.
Roads, bridges and houses have all been swept away
and more rain is forecast.

UNDP's Nairobi-based Drought Monitoring Centre (DMC)
expects the current downpour to continue until mid-December.
For western Kenya and parts of the Lake Victoria region
of eastern Uganda, it warns the rains could stretch
into January/February.

Following is a brief country-by-country situation report:

SOMALIA: Major food deficit predicted

More than 1,300 Somalis have died since the Juba and
Shabelle rivers burst their banks a month ago and some
270,000 people have fled their submerged villages.
Some of the displaced are huddled on fingers of land
surrounded by flood waters. Malaria and respiratory
tract infections, rather than drowning, are increasingly
claiming victims among the survivors, UNICEF's Somalia
office told IRIN.

Somalia is generally a flat and arid country. The Juba
and Shabelle in the south are the country's only two
perennial rivers, fed from the Ethiopian highlands.The
short rain season - the Deyr - usually runs between
October and November. However, heavy rains in Ethiopia
coupled with torrents in southern Somalia - over 1,000
percent more than seasonal averages in some areas -
has led to disaster. The affected regions are the two
river valleys and the inter-riverine areas. The rising
water level of the lower Shabelle marsh has met the
Juba overflow, creating flood plains more than 12 km
wide, hindering access to affected populations. The
last time the two rivers merged was in 1961.

According to conservative estimates, flooding has wiped
out 40 percent of the sorghum crop in the belt of agricultural
land between Bay and Bakol. The weather phenomenon
has exacerbated the disruption to agriculture caused
by insecurity around Baidoa. Food stores, traditionally
kept underground, have also been lost. If farmers cannot
re-plant in time for the January harvest, it will mean
a third consecutive crop failure for some households.
"The implications are of a major food deficit
in the New Year,"a UNICEF spokesperson warned.
"It's a very frightening situation." There
is also concern that the traditional cholera months
at the end of the year will be more intense this season.
Cholera outbreaks have already been reported in the
region and there are fears the disease could reach
epidemic levels as as increasing numbers of people
are thrown together in insanitary conditions. Four
desperately needed helicopters, hired commercially
for a month by UNICEF, are expected to join the search
and relief operation at the weekend, mounted by humanitarian
agencies.

KENYA: National emergency declared in eight districts

Kenya's short rains usually last from October-December.
But up to 10-times more rain than normal for October
fell in the northeast. The Tana River, Kenya's largest,
has burst its banks at several points and there is
serious flooding below Garissa town. Some 122,000 refugees
have fled three camps in Garissa district for higher
ground, according to a Reuters report. Continued rain
upstream threatens settlements around the eastern end
of the river. Along the Tana, farmers have lost their
stored grain and vegetable and banana crops. Food prices
in Mandera, on the Ethiopian border, have tripled.
The population of the most severely-affected districts
(Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Tana River and Lamu) is about
900,000. In addition to those districts, the government
has declared a state of emergency in Marsabit, Moyale
and the Coast.

In Kenya's western region, much of the maize crop is
under water. It "provisionally looks worse than
last year's drought-affected crop," the USAID's
Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) Nairobi office told
IRIN. "Based on previous El Nino patterns,"
the DMC predicts rain into January/February for western
Kenya. In the rest of the country, the skies should
clear by next month. But, even if the rain stops soon,
WFP estimates it will be at least a month before any
normal transport links can resume in the northeast.
However, although disastrous in the short term, a FEWS
analyst suggested the rains could help speed the northeast's
recovery from a long drought by leaving fertile soil
for farmers when the waters recede. At that time, aid
workers stress farmers must have sufficient seeds to
take advantage of the situation.

ETHIOPIA: Government issues international appeal

According to official estimates, a total of 297 people
have been killed and 65,000 displaced in eastern Ethiopia's
Somali National Regional State. As a result of heavy
rains in the highlands over the past month, some 30,000
hectares of cropland is inundated and some 4,252 homes
destroyed along the region's river systems. The Baro
and Akobo rivers in the west "have also been running
very high", threatening a number of low-lying
communities in the Gambella region, UNDP's Emergencies
Unit for Ethiopia reported last week. With villages
cut off, a government air-relief operation has been
mounted to pre-position supplies in the central Ogaden
town of Gode and an airforce helicopter deployed to
shuttle supplies to affected communities around Kelafo,
Mustahil and Ferfer and to rescue people trapped by
the rising water levels. Operations are being coordinated
in the field by an emergency task force in Gode comprising
representatives of the local administration, military,
Red Cross and the Government's Disaster Prevention
and Preparedness Commission (DPPC). Following an appeal
for international assistance, France has supplied two
helicopters which have arrived in Gode.

UGANDA: Flooding in east, landslides in south

Eastern Uganda shares the same rainfall pattern as western
Kenya. According to the DMC, the region has had "abnormally
heavy rainfall". The rains started up to one month
late, but their onset has been accompanied by flooding
in the east which has killed 35 people in Mbale district.
The state-owned 'New Vision' has also reported that
heavy rains in the south have caused landslides in
the mountainous Kabale area which have blocked roads.

Nairobi, 25 November 1997

[Ends]

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